Linux phones are getting closer and closer to usability every day. I don't care that they'll always be less polished than iOS or Android, I want a Linux phone.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
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Linux phones
Will we be able to use messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Signal on Linux phones?
Yes, since you can run Android apps on them. They will be slower and have some quirks though I'm sure.
I've been curious about Linux phones. Can you recommended any devices or operating systems to watch? Thanks.
Pinephone has a great active community, and the device itself is dirt cheap (also pretty low-specced). There's a pro version with a much better specs in theory, but development state is much rougher. Not that the basic model is anywhere near daily driver material yet, but the progress is very appreciable every time i check in.
RiscV laptops and precompiled binaries in package managers.
Linux phones for me. Really impressed by how these things have come in the last 3-4 years, and now we're getting close to having at least one that's usable day-to-day (with plenty of rough edges, obviously). As soon as that happens I hope more people will decide to take the plunge and really start pushing things forward.
A WINE type app but for OSX (or really just iOS) apps would be awesome to have both desktops and phone. Call it CIDER or something similar. I reckon the way Apple does their app stores these days it would be hard to actually get most software working, but I don't think that alone is a showstopper.
Having both that and Waydroid on a phone would be pretty great. You might want to check out Darling for running Mac apps on Linux in the meantime, since its goals are similar to Wine's (but it's still early in development in comparison)
I'm just disappointed in the direction of UX they're all taking. Ubuntu Touch was looking innovative and made me excited. Then that didn't happen and now we just have a bunch of Android look-alikes but worse and buggier. Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad to have GNU/Linux on a phone either way (especially NixOS Mobile), but I'm not excited to use one.
I don't know if it's just me getting older or if innovation in how we interface with technology has just sort of stagnated. In the past there was so much happening. New input methods (all kinds of pointer devices, joysticks, weird keyboards); graphical paradigms (floating windows vs tiling panes, tabs, stacking, grouping, virtual desktops); display technologies (vector graphics, convex screens, flat screens, projectors, VR headsets, e-ink); even machine architectures (eg Lisp machines) and how you interacted with your computer environment as a result.
As far as I can tell, VR systems are the latest innovation and they haven't changed significantly in close to a decade. E-ink displays are almost nowhere to be found, or only attached to shitty devices (thanks, patent laws) - although I'm excited for the PineNote to eventually happen.
How do we still not have radial menus?! Or visual graph-like pipelining for composing input-outputs between bespoke programs?! We've all settled on a very homogenous way of interacting with computers, and I don't believe for a second that it's the best way.
Just want to add that I don't think it's a technological plateau. I think it's capitalism producing shiny and "upgraded" versions of things that are easy to sell. Things that enable accessible and rapid consumption. High refresh rate, vertical high-resolution screens for endless scrolling in apps optimised for ads-scrolled-past-per-second. E-ink devices only good enough that you can clearly see the ads on them as you read your books. Things are just not made for humans. They're made for corporations to extract value out of humans.
pop os new de
Yea, Cosmo Desktop sounds really cool.
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